Tag Archives: Rodgersia

This week, I just had to relay a lovely thing that happened to me! When I’m not writing for Fine Foliage, and I’m not working on my business as “The Personal Garden Coach”, and I’m not in my own garden, I am working at a lovely nursery just south of Seattle called Furney’s.

I approached a nice lady looking at some Rodgersia (a VERY cool choice, so I KNOW she had great taste) to offer my help. She told me that she was re-designing a portion of her garden based on this fantastic post that she found via Pinterest. I said, “That’s a wonderful tool for getting inspiration, great idea. What did you see?”

The woman begins to tell me about this post that had a combination of Rodgersia combined with Pieris ‘Little Heath’ and how much she LOVED the foliage texture and contrast, not to mention the rich color tones. Click….Click…Click…. you could hear the gears grinding in my head. “Wait a minute- that’s from my book!”

I’m not sure which one of us was more excited and taken aback by the realization that she had not only stumbled onto and fell in love with a combination we had posted on Pinterest, or that she had run into one of the authors of that book in person when she was looking for those VERY plants! It was a surreal moment to be sure, I will never forget it.
Have you ever seen Pinterest? I dare you to fall down THAT rabbit hole! Its an amazing tool for so many things. Finding inspiration for garden design ideas is just one small but effective use for sure.

A short explanation of what Pinterest does; Pinterest is a pinboard-style photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, and hobbies. It allows users to save images and categorize them on different boards. They can follow other users’ boards if they have similar tastes. Popular categories are travel, cars, food, film, humor, home design, sports, fashion, and art.

Since garden topics and foliage in particular are a such a visual bonanza, its THE perfect medium other than our own blog of course, to create your own personalized scrapbook of ideas to create in your real life!

Gardens that are fortunate to have shade or part sun, have design options for special effects with foliage colors and textures that the full sun gardens envy. It’s imperative to take notice of the high contrast details from every angle, they’re worth ogling!

This series of photos illustrates some combinations of plants where the bold leaves in all of their drama, meets the delicate, lacy, strappy, exquisite tendrils, fronds, and froth of smaller foliage. Some of the photos are simply pointing out foliage details that ought to be noted!Gold variegated Yucca on the left and a white variegated Daylily both rise boldly from the fluff of Ajuga flowers in spring.Hosta is a never ending source of options for combinations of both striking and delicate in a small area. Small space gardeners rejoice! On the left, this clean white variegated Hosta is paired with fragrant Sarcococca humulis. On the right is a blue and gold painted Hosta with a fluffy chartreuse fern. Both design companions highlight each plants strength beautifully.

The old-fashioned lace of this fern, Athyrium n. ‘Ghost’ unfurling in front of the seersucker texture of the Hosta in the background is pure composition bliss.

Keeping the color palette bright and yet subtle make it impossible to ignore the fine filigree details of the Fern against the Hosta.

A subtle circle of Japanese Painted Fern (Athyrium n. ‘Pictum’) is mesmerizing with its variety of color and textures.

The Cobra heads on these emerging fern fronds were enough of a detail to stop me in my tracks!

Variegated Lily of the Valley is the dramatic broad-leaved companion downstage from the tousle of red and bronze foliage of the Astilbe.

Prominent and pronounced leaves of the Rheum or Ornamental Rhubarb stand tall and proud in the border with machismo. If you bend down and look at the undersides of the foliage on a bright day, you can see through the light bronze and enjoy the more feminine, cinnamon and mauve-pink coloration from underneath.

The delicate, almost crochet looking leaves of green are in their own contrasting striped jail of golden variegated Iris foliage budding up for spring.

This Rodgersia may have the texture of Elephant skin but certainly not the color! Milk chocolate foliage is a delicious contrast to the smooth as lemon chiffon pie yellow of the Carex in the background.

Kirengeshoma palmata or Yellow wax-bells is a late season bloomer with soft butter cream-colored flowers. But, until August, we will need to be thrilled with this fine-cut silvery foliage.

Bergenia and Hellebore are done blooming and now they become a sturdy green backdrop for the soft grassy texture of Molinia c. Variegata or Variegated Moore Grass.

After spending most of last spring and summer in my hidey-hole office writing Fine Foliage in my jammies, I made the executive decision to schedule at least one day per week for some sort of a garden oriented visit. Whether its a Botanical Garden, Private Garden or a nursery, I need to re-fuel my gardening mojo this year. In this post I will share a small bit of the foliage I found at Seattle’s historic Dunn Gardens last week.

As a cynical old Hort-Head who always feels like I rarely get to see much new and exciting, May I always be BLESSED with the excitement of seeing a fern unfurling every spring.

Now having just written that last statement, why in the world have I NOT been obsessed with Rodgersia until we put it in Fine Foliage? I am simply besotted with it! I bought two in the last week. Quite the investment, but worth it!

On a guided tour, we don’t always have the time to investigate everything we want in detail, so I couldn’t properly ID this plant. But, in any case, I love the alien-esque quality of it rising all by itself in the middle of the moss with that coppery color in the sunlight. SO cool!

Newly born Podophyllum, or May Apple in the moss garden look so pre-historic. I just want to pet their fat, glossy leaves.

Rich cocoa is what these leaves make me crave. A creamy mocha perhaps? Or Rocky Road ice cream? This Hardy Geranium paired with the fresh emerald green growth of the Lilly next to it, I don’t care, I’d take either one- scrumptious!

An entire bank of Maiden Fern, oh the luscious texture, the black stems, that lovely lemon-lime color. I desperately wish for a shady spot to roll in these on a hot afternoon.

This combination under a giant fir tree would not have occurred to me in a hundred years! See, this is why I wanted to go out and get inspired! Capo Blanco Sedum and Cyclamen? HUH?? But, ya gotta give it to them, it is really cool!!!

Admittedly, I am Smurfy short, for those of you under the age of 30, go look that one up! Anyway, this combination of Mahonia (probably one like ‘Charity’) was towering over me next to the elegant Japanese Maple in the background.

The emerging Cardiocrinum or Giant Lilly with its uber glossy leaves were so cool with this frothy new fern just coming up behind it.

There are not many times in ones life (Hort-Headedly speaking of course) where you can photograph Rodgersia AND Acanthus ‘Tasmanian Angel’ AND Hosta all in the same frame. Happy dancing!!

Again, this must go into the category of things that I NEVER would have thought of in a zillion years. This is a Rhododendron, I shall name it Rhododendron ‘Cirque Du Soleil’. 🙂

The hardy Geranium ‘Samobor’ has rather faint foliage markings here in this shady woodland, but it can be quite dramatic and splashy in brighter light. I love it with the Hosta, but what don’t I love with Hosta?

It was SO bright and glarey by the time I got to this point in the garden it was almost impossible to get good shots, so even though this is not ideal light, the IDEA of this design was too good not to share. The very narrow Weeping ‘Blue Atlas’ Cedars all in a row, cascading their cool blue needles down in front of the plain Laurel Hedge was incredible. Adding that great sculpture, made it even better!

The sea creature or alien factor of this Osmunda regalis stuck with me about this plant. The foliage was pure dark chocolate- extra cool!